Willamette Weekend

14 things to do in Portland, Oct. 19-21

Tags:

JACK LONDON BAR - IMAGE: Mike Grippi

Friday, Oct. 19

The Projects[COMICS, ART] Paint-by-numbers murals, choose-your-own adventure stories and Chinese street art—the Projects is not your little brother’s comics festival. Inspired by comics festivals in Europe, this new festival co-organized by Old Town's Floating World comics eschews tables of bored artists flogging their wares in favor of events that bring comic fans and comic creators together. Artists from France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and all over the U.S. will be in town to make collaborative art projects and run workshops at the three-day festival, which will also incorporate Floating World’s annual animation festival, live music, exhibitions and panel discussions. The Projects is at IPRC, 1001 SE Division St., and other venues on Oct. 19-21.

[FILM] If punk is
a culture of outsiders, then Bad
Brains is the definitive American
punk band. Of course, that cannot
be true: No other punk band, from
this country or elsewhere, looked
or sounded like Bad Brains, and
none could ever hope to. As black
Rastafarians playing virtuosic hyperspeed
hardcore for angry, atheistic
Caucasians whose other favorite
musicians barely knew how to
play their instruments, the group’s
members were outcasts among outcasts. In the 1980s, they used sheer,
bullet-train velocity to muscle their
way to the forefront of a scene that
would’ve otherwise excluded them.
Mandy Stein and Ben Logan’s documentary
gives the band its proper
due, as an outfit of unprecedented
instrumental power and a peerless
live act, but it only nicks the surface
of the Washington, D.C., quartet’s
complicated legacy. Still, the electrified early
live footage interspersed throughout
is enough to power the film all on its
own. NW Film
Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave. 8:45
pm.

Filmusik: Turkish Star Wars [FILM] Dünyay Kurtaran Adam, the Turkish
ersion of the space Western, stole
footage from the original and has
everything George Lucas’ version
lacked, including fight scenes in
mosques and Wookie carnage.
Filmusik is performing the entire
soundtrack live and in (mostly) intelligible
English. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd.
Multiple showtimes Friday, Oct. 19, to
Saturday, Nov. 3.

The Great American Distillers Festival[BOOZE] Distillers from around the country make their annual pilgrimage to Portland to set up a folding table at the Tiffany Center and feed you their booze. There will be straight sips and cocktails to sample, plus bottles available for purchase. The press release also promised a man named Tito wearing a 10-gallon hat. Tiffany Center Crystal Ballroom, 1410 SW Morrison St. 5-10 pm Friday, Oct. 19; 1-10 pm Saturday, Oct. 20. $15-$25 for a one-day pass, $25-$40 for a two-day pass. distillersfestival.com.

Brother Ali with Blank Tape Beloved, Homeboy Sandman, DJ Sosa, the Reminders[MUSIC] Everything you'll ever read about Brother Ali will lead with a few unavoidable facts about the artist, so let's get them out of the way right at the top and keep this listing moving: He is a 35-year-old legally blind albino Muslim rapper from the Midwest. OK, now let's talk about his music, beginning with his latest album. Actually, let's first mention its cover, because, well, using an American flag as a prayer rug is undeniably courting controversy. But Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color is not an Immortal Technique-style fusillade of vitriol and conspiracy theories. Over alternately heavy and soulful production from Seattle's Jake One, Ali spits rhymes that aren't so much enraged with the United States as disappointed, his critiques of the country aimed at making it better rather than burning it to the ground. In indie rap, heart and humanity are qualities rarer than albino Muslim emcees, and Ali's got tons of both. Hawthorne Theatre, 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. All ages.

Marianne Wex: An Exhibition[VISUAL ART] German artist Marianne Wex’s challenging
show, An Exhibition, is a time
capsule of the 1970s, but it retains
the power to make us question assumptions about gender circa
2012. From 1972 to 1977, Wex cataloged the body language of men,
women and children in the city of Hamburg, Germany, photographing
people unawares, then counterposing the photos against
images from art history, print ads and TV shows.
Reproduced at YU Contemporary 35 years later, An Exhibition
shows us how the sexes comport themselves in different settings.... read the full review. RICHARD SPEER.YU Contemporary, 800 SE 10th Ave., 236-7996, yucontemporary.org. 1-7 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 15.

In Search of Blind Joe
Death: The Saga of John Fahey

[FILM] In Search of Blind Joe Death:
The Saga of John Fahey, director James Cullingham's hourlong look into the life and work of
the master guitarist, gives the perfect
amount of insight into Fahey’s 61
years on this planet (he passed away
in 2001). You come to understand his
obsession with blues and folk, the
development of his finger-picking
style, and how the sound of his music
evolved over the years. Along the way,
you come to meet friends, collaborators
(including local legends Terry
Robb and Dr. Demento) and fans. And
you get to hear plenty of his incredible
music via live footage and a wellchosen
soundtrack. It’s as spare and intimate and engaging as some of
Fahey’s finest recordings. ROBERT
HAM. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd.
7 pm Saturday, Oct. 20.

Sunday, Oct. 21

Calexico, The Dodos[MUSIC] Of all the phlegmatic folk-pop outfits that earned renown in the early aughts, Calexico has grown to the most satisfying artistic maturity. After turning out a decade’s worth of shuffling, moody Americana, the band has used its recent releases to take half-steps toward bombastic post-punk. It’s a smart move from a creative standpoint, and also somehow fitting with the group’s previous work. Algiers, released earlier this year, reiterates the sextet’s talent for composition, but keeps things fresh by adding cinematic scope to lead songwriter Joey Burns’ story-song arrangements. SHANE DANAHER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 8 pm. $22.50. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.

Nü Sensae, Sick Rats, Peace, Vicious Pleasures[MUSIC] Sure, ’90s nostalgia is presently polluting various thoroughfares with sauntering, taut bodies draped in whatever the friends on Friends were wearing when Ross still had a monkey, but the glorious flipside to such fashion fuckery is throwback noise that shakes the soul. And while Vancouver, B.C.’s Nü Sensae taps into whatever passes for timelessness in the realm of punk rage, the trio’s dueling allegiances to distorted hell-raising and subtly ingratiating hooks are most definitely rooted in the year punk broke. That shit went down 21 years ago, which means we’ve all earned the right to revel in breaking punk all over again. I’m gonna let Nü Sensae have the first crack at it. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St. 8 pm. 21 .

Wake in Fright

[FILM] Spiraling bombastically into a
realm of degradation that few have
captured so purely, Ted Kotcheff’s
1971 Aussie opus Wake in Fright is
evidence of the wide reach of the
era’s cinematic awakening. For nearly
40 years, the film was a forgotten
artifact: It was never transferred to
video, and the few known prints were
in shoddy condition. Miraculously,
Wake in Fright has been salvaged
and restored in all its grimy glory.
The bizarre relic tells the tale of John
Grant (Gary Bond), a teacher in the
outback who misses his train back
to Sydney, loses all his money and
is forced to rely on the charity of
the dust-beaten inhabitants of the
Yabba, a mining town populated by
drunks and perverts who oversee
Grant’s devolution from nebbish
scholar into feral beast. Aesthetically,
the film mirrors the hallucinogenic
flashbacks of Midnight Cowboy, but
its closest relative might be Hunter
S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas, published the same year
and similar in its depiction of overlooked
sociopolitical strata. Wake in
Fright plays like a two-hour version
of that book’s blurry finale, a boozesoaked
odyssey into madness with a
terrific Donald Pleasance playing Dr.
Gonzo to Grant, guiding him through
a nightmare of hazy memories, rote
masculinity and wild-eyed savagery.
The film never relents, and the result
is a queasy, jarring and inarguably
brilliant examination of isolationist
fears. R. AP KRYZA. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave. Multiple showtimes.

Oregon Repertory Singers

[MUSIC] The choir opens its season with
one of the most popular recent
works by one of the planet’s
hottest young choral composers: the eclectic Norwegian-born,
Southern California-based composer
Ola Gjeilo’s initially arresting
(if ultimately somewhat saccharine)
Dark Night of the Soul , a
setting of a medieval poem by St.
John of the Cross that incorporates
driving, dramatic minimalist
piano patterns, neo-romantic
film-score textures (he studied film
music at University of Southern
California), lush “Carmina Burana”
and jazz harmonies and a string
quartet (courtesy of Classical
Revolution PDX) to create a contemporary
sounding crowd-pleaser
that’s topped the classical charts. BRETT CAMPBELL. First United Methodist
Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St., 230-0652. 7:30 pm Friday and 4 pm
Sunday, Oct. 19 and 21. $15-$35.

Body Awareness [THEATER] Young playwright Annie Baker is a
writer of delicate-but-probing works,
quiet plays that have a way of sneaking
up on you. CoHo Productions
stages her comedy about a Body
Awareness Week at a fictional Vermont
college, which explores sexuality
and all its pain and humor. The CoHo
Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 231-
3959. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2
pm Sundays. $20-$25.